The other day a video from a young kid named Jonah Mowry, where he told the story of the relentless bullying he experiences on a daily basis, went viral. Here’s that video again if you haven’t seen it:
When I posted it, I described Jonah as a specific example of a kid that Linda Harvey and the rest of the Religious Right refuses to protect, and asked what was more valuable: that child, or their dogma?
Christian writer John Shore took that idea a lot further than I did, and he took the gloves off. Quoting it almost in its entirety, because John likes me and won’t get mad:
Tell me that your belief system didn’t help put the hot tears on this kid’s cheeks. Tell me that the bullies who torment this kid aren’t in any way encouraged or empowered by your tacit approval of their actions. Tell me that the shame this kid feels about himself has nothing to do with the shame that you believe all gay people should feel for themselves.
Tell me that you can’t comprehend the connection between your conviction that God finds homosexuals repulsive, and the fact that this kid finds himself so repulsive that he habitually cuts his own flesh.
Tell me, please, how you love this kid. Tell me how you understand his pain. Tell me how when he cries, you cry.
Tell me how you want to do everything in your power to make sure that no one, ever again, feels free to in any way victimize a young gay person.
A Christian myself, I am pleading with you to be honest with me about this.
Tell me, please, how none of this kid’s anguish has anything to do with you.
I’m listening. I really am.
We all are.
All ears. You first, Linda Harvey. Then Tony Perkins. And then we can go alphabetically through America’s bigot leaders after that. Explain how your bigotry is worth more than this or any other child’s suffering.
I have a feeling our readers of faith will appreciate this piece from John Shore over at HuffPost. He sets it up by explaining that among most Christians, the false and ridiculous idea that sexuality can be “changed,” is being largely rejected, to be replaced by a new argument:
Nowadays, the Christian refrain isn’t, “Stop being gay.” Now it is, “Stop acting gay.” They’ve given up trying to argue that the homosexual can change his or her sexual orientation: the complete failure of Christian Fix-a-Gay and Homo No’ Mo! programs—not to mention a universe of anecdotal and empirical evidence—have left them little choice. So they’ve changed their approach. Now the argument is … well, just like my emailer said: A homosexual struggling against the temptation to act homosexual is no different from anyone else struggling to resist a sinful temptation.
Christians love this new argument. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it ten thousand times. We all have. You whisper “gay” into the ear of a sleeping Christian, and there’s an excellent chance they’ll just start saying it in their sleep. “Just like any other sinful temptation. We’re all sinners. Must resist.”
And putting your brain to sleep before you say that is the very best way to say it, too. Because it could only make sense to a brain-dead person. It’s just . . . too stupid for words.
But lemme try anyway.
And he does. Read it all. Seriously. It’s that good.
First of all, for the record, the official arms of the Religious Right have been unsurprisingly silent about the wave of gay teen suicides in the news. They know, on some level, that this is partially their fault. Their minds are small, so they have a hard time figuring out the connection, but they know that when we point at them as culprits for creating the climate that leads to kids killing themselves, that we’re not just making things up, and that they are a large part of the problem. If you see a response from any important wingnut, let us know, but I haven’t seen one yet.
But I wanted to highlight two very different Christian responses to the existence of gay teens, in light of what’s going on. Dan Savage highlighted them first, so let’s look at them. We’ll go with “bad” first, because I want to end all blog posts on a happy note today, so work with me, world.
As you all know, Dan has started a YouTube project called “It Gets Better,” where LGBT adults and allies simply talk to LGBT youth with that simple message: It gets better. So, of course, we have a creepy Christian with his own response. Dan sets it up:
[W]hen I listen to a grown man fantasize about a 15 year old boy being tormented in hell for all eternity, an infamous name pops to mind: John Wayne Gacy. And the resemblance in this case is striking.
Yeah, it IS striking. The man in the video at the link below is a predator, pure and simple. The video can’t be embedded [which is fine, because it keeps the creepy, disgusting man's face off my blog], but if you click here, you can watch a “Biblical response” to Dan Savage, called “It Gets Worse.” You will note that his YouTube video allows no comments, which is par for the course among wingnuts. He explains in the video that there is no debate, and as the man obviously looks like a paragon of education and excellence…
The good news is that, within gay teens’ lifetimes, men like that will be relegated to Ku Klux Klan status.
NOW A GOOD ONE!
Dan also points to a Christian writer named John Shore, who is having a very honest conversation at his blog about the gay teen suicide rate. This is a guy who writes in all kinds of ideological places, and he’s not condemning gay kids. Indeed, he even interviewed the head of the Trevor Project, Charles Robbins. In his own piece on the gay teen suicide rate, he had this to say:
I love being Christian; I am forever humbled by what Christ did for humankind on the cross; I understand and experience the Bible as divine and breathtakingly inspirational. I pray to God every morning. Contemplating the majesty and mercy of God is part of my everyday life.
So what? That has zero to do with the fact that gay teens are thirty percent more likely than straight teens to shoot themselves in the head, to let their blood flow out until they’re white, to hang themselves from their neck until they stop twitching. Nor has it anything to do with the fact that the vast majority of my brothers and sister in Christ passionately hold that living as a gay person is a contemptible disgrace to God, and a blatant, willful offense against everything that’s decent and honorable.
We can say we’re only trying to follow God. We can say that we personally would never do anything to hurt a gay person. We can say that we love the sinner, but hate their sin. We can say anything.
But let’s not insult ourselves and anyone listening to us by saying that we don’t understand the relationship between the gay teen suicide rate, and the common, absolute Christian condemnation of gays.
In his comments section, I thanked him for bringing this conversation to his audience. Often, people will shy away from topics because they’re too “controversial” or perhaps just too visceral. And we all have different voices. I, as an atheist, can say certain things on issues that perhaps Christians can’t or wouldn’t. Likewise, Christians can often speak to fellow Christians, in ways that I can’t. The most important thing is that we’re speaking out, to each other.
At the same time, it’s important to make sure we’re not wasting our breath. Being anti-gay is, in the year 2010, rapidly becoming, the view of growing numbers of Americans, the moral equivalent of racism. This is a good thing. There does come a time when, if there are homophobic people in our lives [I'm primarily speaking to our straight allies here], it may be time to cut them off. If a person is teachable, that’s one thing. [And we can often learn from them!] But if they are not, it may be time to start treating those homophobes as we would treat a virulently racist neighbor or associate. As Thers said last night on Eschaton [and Thers, thankyewthankyew for the links]:
If you have a homophobic friend, now is the time, now is the time, for your friendship to end.
So, as you might already know, Labor Day weekend in New Orleans means Southern Decadence, one of the biggest, craziest gay festivals in existence. Fun is had by all, unless you’re really trying not to have fun, in which case, why are you there?
Anyway, as you might imagine, whenever a certain number of gays are gathered in the same place, another contingent tends to show up: the Christian protesters, with their loving signs! Great fun.
A friend of mine just posted these pictures on Facebook:
In case you can’t read that, here are all the people who are going to hell, according to these dillweeds:
Fake Christians, Abortionists, Jesus Mockers, Fornicators, Rebellious Women, MUSLIMS, Disobedient Children, Masturbators, Sport Nuts [what?], The Prideful, Hypocrites, Crossdressers, Buddhists, Good People [even the Good People?], Thieves, Inventors of Evil, Homosexuals [it took them that long to mention the fags? Do they know where they are? These people are obviously not Westboro-grade professionals], Party Animals [specifically Parker Posey], Idolators, Adulterers, LIARS, Anarchists, Catholics, Murderers, Atheists [can't get me if I don't believe in you], Pornofreaks [that's a cool compound word, I think], Liberals, Satanists, Cowards, False Teachers, Hindus, and Money Lovers.
Idiots forgot the Jews. How the hell did they forget the Jews?
Amateurs.
Also, they have a question for the people there:
Why no, I am not, and neither are my friends who took this, but thank you for axing, have a nice day?
These people. Sheesh. At least they’re entertaining.
But when you’re a Christian Rightist, the rules of prayer change. A new rule applies: That of smiting the people whom you don’ t like.
Says Schultz:
Religion has become the weapon of choice for many people in this country, particularly the far right, and it’s alienating a growing number of Americans. A lot of us don’t buy into a version of God who picks sides, not between good and evil, but between Democrats and Republicans. We don’t believe God cherry-picks religions, either.
A vocabulary carefully crafted into lethal lies almost always foreshadows fatalities.
In the case of Nazi Germany, the evidence of Hitler’s wicked intentions — from Mein Kampf to the Brown Shirts – was vividly clear. People may have ignored the alarm bells, but no one can say that there were not warnings of the brutality to come.
In 1994, Hutu radio broadcasts that called Tutsis cockroaches helped lead to genocide in Rwanda. Prior to the infamous broadcasts, a newspaper published the Hutu Ten Commandments, which smeared the rival ethnic tribe and included the eerily prescient eighth commandment: “Hutus must stop having mercy on the Tutsis.”
Earlier this month, in Gojra, Pakistan, more than 20,000 rioters torched 100 houses that belonged to Christian families and murdered seven people after a false rumor spread that the town’s Christians had defiled the Koran. Local mullahs enthusiastically furthered this big lie and used it to spark violence.
“We were afraid because the clerics had been railing against us in the mosques,” Riaz Masih, a Christian and retired math teacher whose house was gutted told the New York Times. “They said, ‘Let’s teach them a lesson.’”
The circumstances of these tragedies are vastly disparate in terms of geography, time period and circumstances. However, they illustrate three points:
1) Inflammatory and defamatory words, especially if spoken by religious or political authority figures, can and do lead to violence.
2) There is no shortage of mentally unbalanced people who will sometimes carry out shocking acts, and we should be very careful not to incite them with rhetoric that stokes their paranoia. Like stacks of firewood, these angry individuals go unnoticed until the gasoline is poured and the match is lit.
3) Americans are human beings, just like everyone else. So, the notion that what we say does not matter “because it could never happen here” is jingoistic foolishness.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Dr. Michael Brown, an anti-gay ideologue in Charlotte who brought hundreds of red shirted fundamentalists to that town’s gay pride event. Brown’s mission is to “raise up a holy army of uncompromising spirit-filled radicals who will shake an entire generation with the gospel of Jesus by life or death.”
If you haven’t noticed, the extreme right is getting dangerously delirious. A black president, a Latina on the Supreme Court and gay people gearing up to marry in Iowa has exacerbated this crowd’s feelings of marginalization. (Read More)
